1906-7. TRANSACTIONS. 85 



of the merchants of Montreal to equip him with trading goods 

 and provisions for his expedition. The plan was to penetrate 

 to Lake Winnipeg, then vaguely known through reports of the 

 Indians, and establish a trading post there, as well as on Rainy 

 lake and Lake of the Woods. This would give him a secure 

 foothold in the western country, and enable him to mature his 

 plans for a dash to the Western Sea, believed to be at no great 

 distance from Lake Winnipeg. Incidentally he was to induce 

 the western tribes to bring their furs to his posts and trade them 

 for goods carried up from Montreal; instead of taking them 

 down to the English on Hudson Bay. Most of the profits of the 

 venture were to go to the Montreal merchants, although La 

 Verendrye had himself sunk in it all his personal fortune. 



The general outlines of the expedition will be familiar to 

 all readers of Francis Parkman. Miss Agnes Laut has also told 

 the story, in her own delightful way, in " Pathfinders of the 

 West.'' Nothing could be more truly heroic than the way in 

 which this Canadian explorer stuck to his great project in spite 

 of difficulties and disasters that would have broken the heart 

 of any ordinary man. Three sons and a nephew, La Jemeraye, 

 accompanied him into the west. The hardships of the under- 

 taking killed La Jemeraye, and one of the sons was murdered 

 by the Sioux on the Lake of the Woods. Yet La Verendrye 

 never dreamed of abandoning his task. With his two remaining 

 sons he pushed on, determined to win at all hazards. Precious 

 time was lost in working up the fur-trade, to satisfy the clamorous 

 creditors at Montreal, and all the thanks he got was the charge 

 that his exploration was a mere pretext; that he was secretly 

 enriching himself at the expense of the merchants who had help 

 to equip him for the expedition. He had sent them down several 

 rich cargoes of furs; they had absorbed all the profits of the 

 posts and left him worse than penniless; yet they threatened 

 him with a lawsuit — because they had counted on a hundred 

 per cent, profit and got only fifty. " In spite of the derangement 

 of my affairs," he writes, with pardonable bitterness, "the envy 

 and jealousy of various persons impelled them to write letters to 

 the Court insinuating that I thought of nothing but making my 

 fortune. If more than forty thousand livres of debt are an 

 advantage, then I can flatter myself that I am rich indeed." 



From Lake Winnipeg, he and his sons ascended the Red 

 river to the mouth of the Assiniboine, where they built Fort 



